


Calming Influence

by Sarren



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 16:14:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9332939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarren/pseuds/Sarren
Summary: Will's dreams still bother him.





	

Will sleeps well in his new life. The sleep of the just, Hannibal says. He’s indulgent of Will’s insistence that they only kill evildoers and looks amused when Will comments that it’s lucky there are so many rude bad people.

When the nightmares do wake him he drags himself across the hall to Hannibal’s room. Crawls into Hannibal’s bed and listens to Hannibal’s breaths, calming as a metronome, because Hannibal sleeps like the dead. He used to slump against the door frame until he could bring himself stumble back to his sweat soaked, twisted sheets, until the night he stood shaking, his heart hammering its way out of his chest and realized, with a clutch of panic to the throat that Hannibal was awake. 

Hannibal had been watching him from the gloom, like every monster under the bed. Will had flinched as Hannibal moved, but it had only been to pull the bedclothes beside him aside. Will had taken probably too long to understand that it was an invitation, but Hannibal had been patient, as he always was (except when he wasn’t), and finally, ungraciously, gratefully, Will had crawled under the covers. He’d turned on his side towards the edge of the bed and shivered and shivered, all his foundations shifting again as Hannibal stroked fingers through his sweaty hair, soothing his mind as well as his body. He’d slept, reassured, because nothing in his dreams was scarier than the thing watching over him.

Hannibal had been gone from the bed when he awoke the next day, the sun high in the sky. He hadn’t said anything when Will stumbled into the kitchen, merely handed him a cup of perfectly brewed, perfectly hot coffee and left him to huddle over it. He hadn’t said anything the next time Will appeared in his doorway, sweating and shaking, not waiting for an invitation this time, but his fingers were there at his temple again, gliding through his hair. 

Hannibal’s used to his presence now and Will crawling into bed doesn’t wake him. Usually just Hannibal’s presence alongside him is enough to quiet his mind. Rarely, when his mind rips and tears reality away from him and he can’t believe that Hannibal is truly real he’ll edge close to the warm, dark, breathing shape beside him and within moments Hannibal’s arms will surround him and he will be engulfed, subsumed, consumed. At peace.


End file.
